Related Clinical Services

Department of Rheumatology | Overview

The Department of Rheumatology at Boston Children's Hospital cares for children and adolescents with a broad range of rheumatologic and inflammatory diseases-conditions involving joints, soft tissues and connective tissues. Our team can provide your child with state-of-the-art diagnosis, treatment and clinical management. And, when appropriate, we work with specialists at other hospitals to ensure that your child receives comprehensive and coordinated care through adulthood.

Home to one of the largest and most experienced rheumatology programs in the United States, our staff cares for more than 3,000 children in our outpatient clinic each year. More than 600 children are treated on an inpatient (hospitalized) basis each year.

Our expertise

At Boston Children's Dermatology-Rheumatology Center, we provide one-stop care for children who need consultations for both cutaneous and rheumatologic conditions. Several arthritis-related diseases require treatment from both dermatologists and rheumatologists. This partnership allows our physicians to easily share information, leading to a better understanding of these diseases- and allows more efficient and ultimately better care for your child.

Our patients

Children from throughout the United States and around the world are referred to Children's for expert consultation and second opinions concerning difficult or complex inflammatory conditions. In fact, Boston Children's Rheumatology Program is a national referral center for Kawasaki disease, and is an internationally recognized center for the evaluation of unique or undiagnosed conditions.

Did you know?

When people hear "arthritis," older people immediately come to mind. But juvenile rheumatoid arthritis (JRA), an autoimmune disease, affects one out of every 500 children, making it among the most prevalent chronic childhood disease in the country. JRA's cause is not fully understood- children may be genetically susceptible or develop inflammation in their joints when they are exposed to certain infections or environmental triggers. Twenty percent of children outgrow JRA, but most will have to be followed by a specialist indefinitely.

Discover: Rheumatology

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News

To raise awareness about the importance of early diagnosis of arthritis, our departments have teamed up to form Children's new Dermatology-Rheumatology Center.

Innovations

At Boston Children’s Hospital, we aim to solve some of the world’s greatest pediatric health problems. Some ways we do this stem from scientific research: Understanding diseases deeply—even at the cellular or molecular level—leads to new drugs and therapies. Other discoveries arise from moments spent at patients’ bedsides, when doctors and nurses see opportunities to improve care. This approach, which we call “clinical innovations,” often requires us to develop entirely new tools or come up with inventive strategies. This creative form of innovation is the path by which many major improvements in health care have been made.

Quality and Safety

At Boston Children’s Hospital, we believe that patients and families deserve to know whether the hospital where they have chosen to receive their care meets the highest standards and is committed to excellence. Through our Program for Patient Safety and Quality, we continually monitor and improve the care we provide to our patients. Since the diseases and chronic conditions that affect children and adolescents are quite different from those of adults, it is often not appropriate to use adult measures to evaluate the quality of pediatric care. That’s why we have taken a leadership role in developing scientifically sound methods to measure the quality of care provided to all children and adolescents.

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We are grateful to have been ranked #1 on U.S. News & World Report's list of the best children's hospitals in the nation for the third year in a row, an honor we could not have achieved without the patients and families who inspire us to do our very best for them. Thanks to you, Boston Children's is a place where we can write the greatest children's stories ever told.”